Dear @anita and @helcat thank you for your replies and support in this thread!

Best,

M

Dear @anita,

Thanks for your response! Even though we are on different pages about the visiting father thing, and I am perhaps using a different tool set to try to understand the situation (the myers briggs personality types – its outdated science but I still find it personally helpful. I type as INFP.) I appreciate your perspective and did take out time to consider whether it was still visiting my father that was impacting my feelings.

I hear you on the managing anxiety around freelancing!

Best,

M

• This reply was modified 1 year, 6 months ago by greenshade.

Hi @anita,
Thanks for your response.

” “I’m not sure I want to change that about myself” – it is difficult enough to change something significant about yourself when you really want to change it, no way to change it if you don’t really want to change it.

“The other part feels like maybe this is who I am, it’s my personality, even if I didn’t have trauma” – seems to me that we use the word personality for what we don’t want to change about ourselves, or for what we wish we could change but we don’t believe we can.

“Why am I compelling myself to fit into a box I don’t fit into?” – no matter what employment you do, even freelancing, you’ll still have to fit into some kind of a box, as there will be rules and regulations to follow and difficult people to interact with”

I do like my discomfort with hierarchies – I feel they create unhealthy exchanges of power, and cause unquestioning deference to people in power simply because they are in power; and that leads to bad decision making and inefficiency; and also creates opportunities for abuse of power. I see this happen at my work place all of the time. I even participate in it sometimes, because it gets exhausting to be continuously pushing back against a culture I don’t like. I have to believe that its possible to build a work life for myself where I can choose who to work with and when, as equals. I feel those are pretty basic boundaries that I don’t want to compromise on so changing my dislike for hierarchies would feel like changing myself in an abusive way, where I disregard my boundaries. I know I did say that I don’t know if one can survive without adapting to this environment, but in retrospect I think the energy of this statement was a little stockholm syndromy and maybe not reality as I am seeing it when calmer.

When I say compelling myself to fit into a box, I don’t mean that I am looking for an absence of rules or difficult people, but that I am looking for a place where I am not constantly going against my nature. Freelancing, and its build-your-own-path nature appeal to me more because it seems I would have more choice in how to structure my life . I can’t know without trying it however and I guess the uncertainty is scary.

“Yes, I know I project and get triggered, and that is more about me than the situation I am in, but the painful feelings that come up feel pretty real” – I am sure that the painful feelings that come up in the context of the workplace feel real. The thought: I am projecting, does not prevent the feelings. It takes much more than a thought to change or soften painful feelings.

That makes sense. What would you recommend?

“I imagine that you regularly visit your father and that every time you visit him, you don’t feel much of anything because you are in the decades-old habit of numbing the feelings of being TRAPPED in his MANIC BOX. The feelings that are numbed in his presence wake up in the workplace context and you feel trapped.”

I agree that I feel trapped when I get triggered, and that I get triggered at work, but I don’t think that has to do with visiting my dad. I am comfortable with the amount I visit my dad, its on my terms, and I feel wholesome and healthy afterwards and I can leave whenever I want. It feels like a much healthier relationship on both ends – his mental health is well enough right now that he is able to really present and I find myself able to receive support and love from him. I enjoy my conversations with him and am getting to experience him as the person, not the person in active mania, which is something I have wanted my whole life. I also know that if/when his mental health deteriorates again, I am not emotionally dependent on his support and will be able to back off.

My interpretation is that I feel trapped when I am in an environment where it feels difficult to communicate because the culture of the place doesn’t support open communication. While I am getting better at stating my boundaries, its still a work in progress and this place requires constant boundary setting to even have enough time blocked out to meet my own deliverables. And the boundary setting is more exhausting than I have experienced within start ups. I am more comfortable working in those because less formal cultures in my opinion allow for more real talk and are built to allow for more flexible work schedules.

There is an ongoing dynamic: the numbing of the trapped feelings; the waking up of the trapped feelings.

I am reading your most recent post: “I feel excited and relieved at the thought of leaving” leaving a box in which you feel trapped is exciting!

Yes! Cant wait till I am out!

“One of the two higher ups… emailed half an hour before closing time and assigned a task and said that it had to be done that night. I got so triggered” – the numbed feelings of being trapped woke up!

“This week, I was in a group meeting and felt pressured to take on work that I knew would be difficult to complete on time. I could have said no but froze in the moment and felt triggered afterwards” – you could have said No, but the feelings of being trapped woke up and froze your No.

You asked me in the post addressed to me, “How does one decide where the line is for themselves after which they will not put up with triggering behavior, whether the behavior itself is problematic or not?” – look at the quote right above: you could have said No. It was an option available to you. This means that in that circumstance, you were not really trapped in a box because you had an out (saying No). If you are unable to say No, you will feel trapped anywhere and everywhere, won’t you?

I have worked in 4 organizations, I felt trapped in two, did not feel trapped in the other two. While I was working in the two I did not feel trapped in,  I was also living with my parents, so I think this does have to do with the nature and type of the workplace rather than the fact that I’m still in contact with my father.

With this sentence, I think what I was trying to say is I am afraid I might be staying too long in challenging situations because I invalidate myself and my triggers by saying “oh these are just triggers; this is my ish to work on, its not really a bad situation”

Best,

M

I’m not sure I want to change THAT about myself, its more like a part of me feels like I will need to change this about myself in order to survive, the other part feels like maybe this is who I am, its my personality, even if I didnt have trauma I may not have liked working in very heirarchal large organizations so why am I compelling myself to fit into a box I dont fit into? I bounce between these two states a lot.

Sorry just a clarrifying post lol. The “that” in bold and capital refers to :Your last sentence in your most recent post is: “I usually prefer working in smaller less formal set ups with people with similar value sets, but I am feeling internal pressure to change that about myself”

Hi @Helcat,

Thanks for your response! Yes there are people who trigger me more (specifically there are two people, both quite high up in the organization who throw their weight around. I don’t know if I can separate them. I have been trying. But then something else happens and I get triggered again and its back to square one, there have been three triggers within this last week and it seems like my treshold is getting lower rather than higher, by that i mean Im getting triggered more rather than less. I dont know how much I should put up with, how much is normal. I am afraid that since most work places have people like this in authority positions, I am making things difficult for myself by deciding to leave jobs because I feel triggered at them and that I will pretty much end up unemployed and looking for handouts 20 yrs down the line unless I suck it up now. But my brain seems to be in a continous grey angry fog. Dont know.

Best,

M

Heyy @Helcat thanks for your response! Yes I do think that is part of it. I have studied at this place before as well and have so many biases against it from that time as well, in fact its when I was studying there that I first developed my anxiety symtoms that Anita has also described in her reply. But since I have experienced burn out before I am also more anxious around enforcing my boundaries for time off, and it feels like a violation when someone tries to encroach on holidays. I also interpret it as them playing a control game (I’m the boss and I need to know you’re available whenever I ask).

In general, however I feel if someone is more respectful of my boundaries generally, I also have less of a reaction if they reach out over holidays (I feel in those cases that I know they wouldn’t  disrupt my time off unless it was an emergency) and the intent and energy of that interaction feels different.

I guess it is a conflict of – I feel like the hierarchical work environment is not a good fit for me, but I am also tempted by what is achievable in these environments and the amount of impact you can have + the benefits of being paid on time are pretty great (Ive worked in more lose environments where sometimes I wasn’t paid for months) so a part of me is trying to see if I can CBT myself enough to fitting into this environment.

M

Dear all, thank you for your replies.

It has been some week :).

@anita it is very scary to think of it, especially the deaths of the people closest to me – that they will one day just not exist – their voice, smell, everything will disappear – it really makes me feel like everything is worthless.

“No one beats mortality because of loving someone, or because of any reason.” This is very true. I think sometimes feelings of love feel so strong I don’t understand how they can’t top every other natural law lol.

That is very interesting. In the last 4 years, I found a permanent work situation (lets all it x) that felt safe and aligned with my work style although I did feel a little codependent with my coworkers. Overall, I was excited and happy and feeling good about life and the critical voice in my head had also softened (through meditation and modeling by others). After 2yrs I left to do my masters in a different country. I came back to x and things were different (the working environment had changed, pays were not frequent, my input wasn’t as welcome). I left x mostly because I wanted financial stability to move out of my parents, and am now working two jobs, one of which feels perfectionistic, rigid and critical and the critical voices in my head and guilty feeling are back and I feel frozen and unable to work. So this is where I am at.

Hi Inky and Anita,

I am sorry for disappearing. I just wanted to let to know you that I read/appreciated your replies. It just felt like the issues were too big for me to manage at the time (and still feel so) so I blocked them out. Hope you’re both well!

Best,

M